


Choose One

by HelenaHGWells



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: F/M, Marwood - Freeform, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenaHGWells/pseuds/HelenaHGWells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luther and Alice survived the end of season three and ran off into the sunset. But John is still haunted by Marwood's actions, Zoe's death, and the implications of the choice he made.</p>
<p>A one-shot set in some exotic location on John and Alice's adventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose One

"You have to choose one."

They are on the roof. Marwood is brandishing a shotgun, pointing it alternately at Alice and… Zoe.

"Choose!" Marwood is yelling, crazed, beyond all reason.

"I can’t choose." Luther is paralyzed.

"You have to choose! Say a name! Say it!"

"Alice."

"Say it again?"

"Alice, Alice, Alice!"

The gun fires. Zoe is on the kitchen floor, covered in blood. Alice and Marwood are gone. Zoe is dead.

—

Luther snaps out of his dream, breathing heavily, palms sweaty, heart racing, the metallic taste of adrenaline in the back of his throat.  
His surroundings drift slowly into his consciousness. He is not in the kitchen of his old home. He is not on the roof of the safehouse. He is in a clean, sparsely furnished bedroom. It’s bright with the first light of the morning. He can smell coffee in the other room. The curtains are drawn back and the window looks out onto a deck. He can see Alice curled up like a cat on a sun lounger, the bright light kissing the pale skin of her shoulder where her hair falls as she sits with her head bent over a book.

He takes a deep breath. He is somewhere else. Marwood is not here. Zoe is gone. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, pausing for a moment to rest his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes, pushing the dream away. He pulls on a tshirt and heads to the kitchen. Alice looks back over her shoulder, watching him.

She joins him in the kitchen as he pours himself a cup of coffee, pushing her own mug towards him. He pours her the rest as she slides onto the stool by the kitchen counter.

"Sleep well?"

"Not really."

"Nightmares?"

He nods.

"What about?"

He is looking toward the window, but not looking outside, just staring off into middle distance.

"Marwood," he says simply. She waits for him to go on. "You. Zoe."

"Mmmm," she hums thoughtfully. "Was he making you choose?"

"Yes."

"Between Zoe and I?"

He nods.

"And who did you pick."

He is slow to answer. “You.”

"But Marwood is in prison; you caught him and justice was served, so you aren’t really worried about him. And Zoe wasn’t on the roof that day, Mary was, so you weren’t really choosing between Zoe and I. You were choosing whether to stay in your old life, which has brought you and the people you love so much pain, or to leave and start a new one."

He sips his coffee quietly, watching her as she dissects his dream. He knows she will be forthright; abrasive even. He expects it. Does he even welcome it now? Value and depend on her ability to really see him and to be brutally honesty about it?

"Did Zoe die?"

"Yes."

"Well that’s interesting."

"Is it?"

"Well yes. In reality, Zoe’s death occurred despite your perverse determination to do the right thing, no matter what it cost you. In leaving with me, you chose to leave that life in which you were always wrestling with your conscience. You chose me in the dream, so Zoe should have been saved. And yet, she still died. What, then, is the real meaning here? What are you afraid of?"

"I don’t know Alice. You’re the clever one- you tell me."

"You’re afraid that you have made a fatal miscalculation. That, perhaps, you are not saving anyone by walking away. You are disappearing further down the rabbit hole. How am I doing?"

He doesn’t reply. She keeps going.

"You used to think me capricious, lawless, lacking in mercy. But as you well know, John, I don’t lack those things. I feel things. I have a keen sense of justice, its just different to yours. You see justice as saving the man who killed your wife and sending him to jail, because it’s right. But I would kill him to spare you the pain of knowing that he was still alive in the world.”

He watches her eyes on him as she unflinchingly peels back the layers of his psyche and lays bare her own.

In the moment that she had shot Ian Reed he had pleaded with her not to, had begged for the life of the man who had killed Zoe. And yet even as she ignored his pleas and pulled the trigger he had felt the satisfaction, the sheer relief of knowing Ian Reed was dead. And he had felt gratitude because she knew he couldn’t do it himself, because she had seen how he would torture himself; she’d seen it with Henry Madsen. So she took the decision out of his hands. She played the villain and did what he needed her to without asking.

"I’m not afraid of you."

"No. You’re afraid that we are the same. And more than anything, you are afraid that despite the choice you made, in the end, it doesn’t make any difference. And it doesn’t, John, not to anyone else. You can’t undo the past and you can’t control the future. People will still die and you won’t be able to stop it."

"Then what was the point?"

"You won’t kill yourself and everyone around you trying. You can stop, John. You can stop now. Stop fighting against the current and just let yourself float downstream. Be happy. Live."

The light caught the red in her hair so it glowed like a halo, contrasting against her pale skin and piercing blue eyes. Could it really be so easy to just let go? From her mouth, it seemed possible. Through her eyes, these conflicts were simply puzzles to solve. For Alice, it wasn’t justice that mattered, it was love. And wasn’t that what he had always valued the most: love and life? He had given everything to protect those values in the service of others; he had given his life, he had lost love.

She was right, it was time to let go. He was not choosing- it wasn’t a choice, between good and evil, right and wrong, corruption and integrity. It was all the same. There was no justice. There was no choice. There was just this: life and love.


End file.
